Dressing the part

Over the past couple of months, I've taken over the job of going out with Wimzie and Hershey in the mornings, to spare my poor husband, who has walked them every single morning that we've lived in this neighborhood, which is going on four years.

I can't walk them myself because they're too strong for me. Well, Wimzie isn't, but Hershey is a medium-sized dog in the prime of his health and fitness and he is one strong boy, particularly because he refuses to walk like a gentleman dog and insists on trying to dislocate your shoulder. Plus, I'd have to carry the pooper-scooper, which, how am I supposed to do that in the absence of a third arm?

My schtick is to let them out of their crates at about 10:30 a.m., which they both seem to vastly prefer to their former wake-up call of 7:00 a.m. My husband used to open Wimzie's cage door and have to coax her to come out, but at 10:30, she leaps out with a happy bound and jumps around doing figure eights. I then take them out the front door to the yard and let them do their business. They both mind me very well and will stop in mid-stride at the sound of my Queen of the Underworld snarl if they start to go after a pedestrian or the occasional squirrel.

So the dogs are fine. We've developed a very nice routine. The only fly in my jam is that I feel it is incumbent upon me, as an upstanding citizen and a member of the historical neighborhood society, to not step outside where half the city can see me (we live on a busy corner) wearing pajama bottoms stuffed into my snow boots, one of my husband's sweatshirts and Aisling's sherbet colored cloche.

No, instead, I have to wearily drape my nice scarf in the approved fashion around my neck, put on my nice black coat and my nice black gloves and make sure I'm wearing something respectable on my legs and feet. I don't want to look like a big lump of fashion distress while I'm standing in the snow, waiting for the dogs to finish their business.

It seems weird and complicated to have to dress up in order to watch a couple of dogs poop and pee, and sometimes I wish I weren't such a compulsive fussbudget. I make myself tired.